This sketchbook painting of stuff began as a triad color scheme of yellow, red and blue. With that as the foundation, I worked my way along the edges of the color wheel to include the bright orange handles of the scissors as well as introducing red/violets and blue/violets for interest and variation of color temperature. By crossing the color wheel borders to neighboring segments I feel the painting has more movement and expresses the playfulness of these objects, pieces of my childhood jumbled with more recent treasures.

Drawn first with fountain pen followed by watercolor. Top to china elephant teapot, jars of tools (scissors and pencils), jar of turpentine, ink bottle, wooden block, die and lizard totem.

Kathleen adores these colors. I thought it only right to paint her tea kettle using her favorite colors. After all, what are birthdays for?

Kathleen's Tea Kettle

It’s the cantaloupe and the honeydew colors that she loves, colors of the sixties. I added the red for my own pleasure. I learned how powerful and beautiful red can be when Kathleen decorated her room in Germany with reds and purples. This painting is a tribute to a friendship that has lasted fifty-nine years and is still growing stronger. The pleasure of color is wonderful to share with one another.

Painting: drawn first with fountain pen filled with black ink, followed by watercolor in a somewhat Complementary Triad Color Scheme of red, green and orange.

I’ve often wondered, when standing before a painting executed with brilliant and bizarre colors, how the artist came up with such combinations. Reality had far too tight a hold on me without my knowing it. I neither saw the exciting color, nor did I feel I had a spring board from which to leap into the glorious world of invention.

When putting together the Color Scheme Game I was concerned that it might be too contrived. It’s just plain easy …. and fun.

I had drawn so many Oxalis leaves that my hand began drawing them without my eye looking at them. I needed to take a break from them. I grabbed a small, silver ladle from a drawer.

Trumpet Parts No. 29 and No. 30 needed help. Perhaps a collaboration between the two might find a solution to the problem of poor value distribution and design.

Trumpet Parts No. 29, No.30, No.31

Left … No.29, Center …. No. 30, Right …. No. 31

I drew a somewhat careful contour drawing with a fountain pen. I threw the dice, came up with a Triad Color Scheme, and chose Yellow-Orange, Blue-Green and Red-Violet. The values didn’t work as I wanted them to and the sketchbook paper is too thin to withstand significant alterations. Turning the page, I started again, trying something totally different and still trying to get my mind free from laboring over my tax preparations. I needed a small orange shape in the bottom left quadrant, but again, couldn’t make that change on the thin paper.

Trumpet Parts No. 31

With nothing to lose, I ripped up No. 29 and collaged it on top of No. 30. The resulting, abstract image, No. 31, has movement and vitality that the other two images are lacking. For those of you who have been following my commitment to complete all of my uncompleted sketchbooks before treating myself to a new one, Trumpet Parts No. 31 completes another sketchbook!